Tag Archives: a message to my readers

I wish this heavy rain would let up, so I can walk to the post office and get a mailer for Phoebe’s book (I need the exercise). But meanwhile–

Yesterday, for the first time ever, we had over 400 views on this blog for the third day in a row–never happened before. And it’s off to a good start this morning, too. Thank you, readers! And thank you, Christian bloggers, who don’t mind me reblogging some of your posts. You’re welcome to reblog any of mine.

All this, mind you, with my Facebook referrals stripped away. In January, for instance, I had over 700 of them. Now there aren’t any. That I’m doing very well without any help from Facebook is a source of great satisfaction to me.

I look forward today to spending some hours editing the copy for Bell Mountain No. 12, His Mercy Endureth Forever. I was going to go to Keyport in my newly-repaired car to pick up some of the best seafood in America at the Keyport Fishery, but I’d rather not drive on the Parkway when it’s raining.

Byron the Quokka is so excited about the impending climax of our comment contest, he has trotted out his baby pictures. That’s him in the pouch. His mother is very proud of him for growing up to be the kind of quokka who can run a comment contest. It turns out quokkas are very found of comment contests and always seem to have one going among themselves.

Anyway, Byron predicts that we’ll have a winner today, before suppertime–so I’d better keep my eyes peeled. It was 87 degrees here yesterday, and now today it’s in the 40s again, so I don’t feel like I’d be much good for anything more challenging than waiting for someone to win the comment contest.

Byron the Quokka has found another bicycle which he wants to offer as the prize to whoever wins our current comment contest. Sorry, Byron, it’s not our bike to give away. The best we can do for a prize is an autographed copy of my new book, The Temptation.

At the moment we have 43,950 comments–just 50 shy of 44,000, just 50 shy of a winner.

The contest is open to everyone, and all comments are eligible except for the following: any comments abusive to anyone else on this site; comments containing profanity or blasphemy; commercials thinly disguised as comments (shame on you!); and comments that are just too inane to be published. Other than that, anything goes.

I’ve got to hand it to Byron: he’s done a good job of running this contest. Who knew quokkas could be such capable administrators? But I don’t think he understands how expensive it would be for me to be giving away bicycles. Money does not loom large in any quokka’s way of life.

If by some statistical misfortune you don’t win the comment contest, there’s always this.

For less money than you’d pay for an order of steamed pork dumplings at the Pink Lotus–and they’re very nice dumplings, I hasten to add–you can get a Kindle copy of my new Bell Mountain novel, The Temptation. And if you’re really feeling like a sport, you can get it in paperback.

What would happen if all thousand of this blog’s subscribers bought the book, all at once?

Well, I would run outside and do a cartwheel, at risk of splitting my pants, my publishers would jump for joy, and leftids would feel downhearted. And a thousand people would have a nice book to read.

Byron the quokka is about ready to jump out of his skin with excitement. Well, he does take these things to heart. Ever since I made him in charge of the comment contest, he can hardly sit still.

There are a mere 127 comments left to go before someone posts No. 44,000 and wins the contest–and an autographed copy of The Temptation. Byron keeps checking because he wants to make the announcement. Unfortunately, the bicycle he wanted to give away as a prize belonged to someone else who has since gone home with it.

Everyone can play and all comments are eligible, with only these exceptions: comments abusive of anybody on this site; comments containing blasphemy or f-bombs; commercials disguised as comments; and, of course, comments too blindingly stupid to be published. Other than that, anything goes!

“Teddy Kiara” asked for this excerpt, from The Palace (Bell Mountain No. 6). I can’t give her exactly what she asked for, because I fear it’d spoil the climax. But I think the following comes close.

Gurun is the girl from a faraway island who, against her will, is taken up as queen of Obann. Goryk Gillow is a traitor who means to crown a false king. We pick up the scene on page 312.

“Gurun came out next. And at the sight of her, Goryk Gillow’s heart seemed suddenly inadequate to keep him on his feet.

“He couldn’t breathe. He’d seen her once before, on the walls above the East Gate. That time he’d been afraid of her, not knowing why. But this time he was frozen.

“She was no natural creature. Her white garments and her long hair blazed, whiter than any white he’d ever seen. The rain seemed not to touch her. Goryk ground his eyes shut, lest her eyes should meet them, but still her white light thrust against the darkness. Deep, deep, deep inside his soul there was a scream.

“The God he had betrayed, defied, and mocked: that God had sent her here to take His vengeance on him. She was His messenger. Goryk trembled from head to toe. Mardar Zo looked up and stared at him, alarmed…

“Goryk didn’t hear them. His only impulse was to escape the terrible white lady: to escape from God. With a strangled scream that finally worked its way out, he freed his feet from the stone and fled, moaning, into the palace…”

Joshua asked for this excerpt: from page 1 and page 2 of Bell Mountain. Remember that Jack’s dream, described here, was originally one of mine.

“In Jack’s dream, he would be somewhere in the valley, maybe trying to throw a stone across the river… So he would be throwing stones, or looking for blackberries, when suddenly the mountain would begin to sing.

“It was always the biggest mountain, Bell Mountain, with its peak hidden in a cloak of clouds so that no one ever saw it. Jack had never in his life heard the sound of a really big bell, or he might have said the mountain rang, not sang.

“But it was a terrible song that made the other mountains tremble and filled the whole valley as if God had flooded it to the foothills with ice water. Jack couldn’t hear the noise of the river anymore, nor the wind, the birds, nor his own heart beating. Indeed, it seemed the river stopped flowing and his heart stopped beating. And he was too terrified to pick up his feet and run away–too terrified even to breathe.

“And then he would wake up.

“As his breath came back to him, he would always find that he was still frightened: scared enough to shiver. But on top of being frightened, and running deeper than the fear, was something else…”

Anyone can request an excerpt from any of my books. Just be sure to give the title, page number, and a brief description of what you want me to excerpt. And remember–we don’t want to spoil any of the climaxes.

And if you haven’t read any of these books yet–well, they’re waiting for you.

This past week I’ve been averaging approximately no Facebook referrals per day, and it beats me why. I haven’t been censored–well, what I mean is, no one has told me I’ve been censored.

I wonder: could it be that a whole lot of people have left Facebook, and there’s no one around to do whatever it is that somebody does to create a referral? Could their traffic be that far down? If it is, they’ve got problems.

Byron the Quokka is concerned that the comments aren’t coming in as fast as he anticipated. So he has decided to up the ante.

Now the prize will be that wonderful bicycle you see in the picture behind him. I don’t know how a quokka goes about obtaining a bicycle. I don’t see how Byron’s feet can reach the pedals.

But whoever posts Comment No. 44,000 will win either an autographed copy of my new book, The Temptation, or that really nifty bike that somehow fell into Byron the Quokka’s opportunistic little paws. “The wheels actually turn!” he claims. We currently have 43,539 comments, so that leaves a mere 461 to go.

So come on, out there–think of something witty, pithy, or unforgettable to say and post it as a comment!

Just hurry up and do it before whoever that bike really belongs to shows up and takes it away.

I think there’s a future, though–don’t you?–in offering other people’s property as prizes in my contests. There’s gotta be a political theory that goes along with that…